Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 3, 1991 TAG: 9103020320
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: John Levin
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
If only she knew how precious a commodity she was asking for. Newspapers, currently paying $650 a ton for newsprint, are doling it out as if it were money itself.
Newsprint's coarseness belies its real value for most outside this business. After reading a day's newspaper, most readers use it to wrap the garbage or take it to be recycled into grocery bags.
But the value of newsprint has been driven home in the past three weeks as we've tried explaining to hundreds of unhappy or angry readers why the Roanoke Times & World-News reduced the length of its financial tables.
For this company, newsprint and ink accounts for 22 percent of the total operating budget, according to Carl Wright, Times-World Corp.'s treasurer. "It's one of your major expenses so [in an economic downturn] you look at how to use less of a consumable item," he said. When a recession brings lower revenues from advertising, newspaper companies look for ways to cut the big-ticket items.
Beginning Feb. 2, we reduced by half a page on Tuesdays through Fridays in the morning editions and by a full page on Saturdays the amount of space devoted to the stock market tables.
Multiplied by the 80,000-copy circulation of our morning newspaper and 125,000-copy Saturday edition, that would equal a $75,000-a-year savings in newsprint and ink.
In the case of our financial tables, it was more a matter of reallocating a precious commodity than an actual slashing of expenses, however.
A portion of the space taken away from the tables is being devoted to a fuller report of business news, in addition to enlarging the size of type in the financial tables.
On most weekdays we have nearly doubled the space available to business stories. Our theory is that our readers need and deserve more general-interest news of the shifting economy, local and national companies and financial events that have direct impacts on their lives. So while some readers understandably say we are giving them less, the hope is that many others will conclude that we are giving them more.
Other portions of the space gained by shorter tables went to the national and local news pages, where earlier there had been cuts.
The space that newsprint represents in a paper's pages is never adequate for its employees, either: reporters who'd like to write longer stories, photographers who envision their pictures played a bit larger or editors who would give readers a wider choice of items.
That means editors always covet any large chunk of space devoted to a single topic: financial tables, sports statistics or the television log. On some days, the amount of space we formerly devoted to financial tables, for example, equaled a third of the total space the newspaper had for national and international news. So, it is not surprising that Managing Editor William K. Warren called the tables "a real newsprint hog."
The question asked frequently by newspaper managers is how many of our readers really need a full, daily report of the financial markets? And do they really rely on their hometown daily to provide it?
According to the National Association of Securities Dealers, a trade group of stock brokers, 47 million Americans - about 18.9 percent of the 1990 census count - own securities. Yet, national newspaper readership studies suggest 4 to 12 percent of daily readers look at financial tables. Together the two statistics suggest many newspapers devote a lot of space to something needed by a small portion of their readers.
But cutting tables is not so simple, as we learned last month.
Consider the dramatic growth of the mutual fund industry.
"One in every four households owns shares in mutual funds, either through pension funds or directly," said John Collins, spokesman for the Investment Company Institute. That Washington, D.C., organization is the mutual fund industry's trade group.
Its most recent survey in 1989 showed that, in the 1980s, the number of households with a stake in mutual funds grew 396 percent, from 4.6 million in 1980 to 22.8 million in 1989. The number of funds grew 459 percent to 3,150 and their total assets rose 716 percent to $1.1 trillion.
Mutual funds are now the third largest holder of Americans' financial assets, after commercial banks and insurance companies, Collins said.
Readers of the Roanoke Times & World-News told us much the same. In response, we've begun restoring some of the mutual fund listings to our market pages and making other refinements that readers requested. And, predictably, it will come at the sacrifice of something else: less space for general business news or a revamping of the farm commodities report.
The point is that allocating expensive space is forcing tougher compromises for nearly every U.S. newspaper.
At The Baltimore Sun, for example, editors sacrificed some financial tables to devote more space to coverage of the Persian Gulf War. Reader reaction was not kind, said assistant business editor Michael Dresser. "Readers expect us to find a way to give them both," he said.
Dresser has spent much of the past two years weighing and implementing changes in the Baltimore paper's financial tables. His experience has made him an unofficial expert in the field, and he tells other editors there are no easy solutions, only compromises.
"Overall, we are giving these readers what they need, but it's less than what they want," Dresser said.
Or, from a 1981 survey of shareholders by the National Association of Securities Dealers: "Virtually nobody believes that too much daily newspaper space is devoted to quotes."
Any paper that asks its readers if they want a financial table will find `'nobody's going to tell you to cut a table," Dresser said. Short of simply making dramatic changes and then listening to comments and complaints, it's difficult to know exactly what readers want, as we've learned in Roanoke.
The reality is that reallocation of space affecting financial tables is likely to be but the first of many similar decisions about what's included in newspapers for years to come.
The day is past when newspapers can be all things to all readers. In a marketplace where television offers 30 cable channels rather than three networks and magazines are sharply focused to every conceivable vocation and pastime, newspapers are the last of the mass media. Forecasts say that by the end of the decade, newspapers will deliver a customized cluster of special sections and pages to its customers, rather than the same package to all. By then, perhaps, we can give readers who want business news all of the financial tables without burdening other readers with so much newsprint they take offense at what lands on their doorstep.
Until then, most regional and community papers are acknowledging they haven't the resources or inclination to replicate Investors Daily or The Wall Street Journal for a small portion of their readers.
That's a tougher call than most readers recognize. For some of our readers, we are the only source of financial tables. But for many more, there are choices. We run the risk of forcing readers to build reliance on another publication.
Indeed, Dresser said he discovered almost half of his readers in Baltimore also use The Wall Street Journal. Why, then, do they insist that their local newspaper devote the space to tables?
"For some people, they want to see their stock prices first thing in the morning, before they get to work and enveloped in problems and have no time to read the Journal," he said.
Another reason is that most editions of the financial dailies, such as the Journal's Charlotte edition that is distributed in Roanoke, quote prices as of their 4:30 p.m. close in New York. The Associated Press sends its member papers final prices, accounting for trading on regional exchanges, including the West Coast.
Others, perhaps, recognize that their local newspaper has a unique franchise for delivering community news with depth and insight on a wide variety of topics, including business. For example, computer technology, for example, now allows us to focus on stocks of regional companies in our financial tables. It's a feature we think allows readers a quick snapshot of the health of companies that matter the most in their lives as well as their investment portfolios.
But the overriding reason for most daily newspapers to continue stock tables, Dresser said, is to fulfill readers' expectations.
"It's something we've given them over the years. They've come to expect it and are disappointed when you don't give it to them."
by CNB